After what figures to be a lengthy and possibly contentious Decatur school board meeting on Dec 8, the district’s scheduling a December 9 announcement of its post-Christmas learning plans.
If the December 3 board work session is an indicator, the five-person board—like the community they represent--remains divided over whether or not K-12 students should return to classroom learning anytime soon, or even this school year.
City Schools of Decatur remains one of the very few, out of 181 Georgia school districts, that’s still 100 percent virtual.
Several sources have contacted the AJC claiming that at least some, perhaps as many as half of the K-12 student body, will return to the classroom in January, perhaps immediately after Christmas on Jan. 5. But Dude wouldn’t confirm this after the work session, saying there still remain a number of discussions, with teachers, principals, administrative staff and the board, before Wednesday’s announcement.
He does appear, along with board members Lewis Jones and Heather Tell, to favor returning to the classroom sooner rather than later. The other three board members were more cautious and equivocal, appearing mostly wary about returning in the near future.
“I struggle with sending teachers, students and staff back when the numbers [of COVID-19] cases are higher than ever,” said Board Member Jana Johnson-Davis, a former middle school teacher.
Her words came a day after CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told the nation that “December and January and February are going to be rough times. I actually believe they’re going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of this nation . . .”
On Thursday the board seemed to be back away from using metrics as a primary determinant for sending students back, a surprising twist from Dude whose been consistently data-driven in his five years as superintendent.
But Dude also added that recent research is showing that, in his words, “the community transmission level does not have as big an impact on the school level as we previously thought.”
Picking up on this Chairman Jones sounded the most clarion note of the evening favoring a return. He began by pointing out that from his observation and discussions, overall virtual learning has a “very very strong, very strong and bad impact” on most students.
“I understand the desire to use metrics, and the value of that in terms of making people feel safe,” he said during the session. “But I think we have to recognize that the numbers in the end are arbitrary, we’re drawing lines without having a basis to draw them.
“It looks like,” he added, “that if you’re going to balance risk-risk, it’s a higher risk to stay shut down, it’s a higher risk to continue what we’re doing. In my judgement the lower risk is to head back in and get the kids back in the building, to get the kids that need to be or want to be in back in.”
The board didn’t discuss what returning to school could look like, if younger students would return first, or if there’d be staggered sessions or some type of hybrid model. Dude and the entire board seemed to favor the idea of a four-hour in-person school day. In this scenario, students would get provided with a sack lunch and/or sack breakfast to take home, but no one would eat inside the school.
Even if some students return in person as early as January, Dude pointed out during an interview after the work session that he would follow very rigorous procedures in handling an outbreak.
“The definition we’re using,” he said, “is if you have two positive cases at a school, and you can’t link them together, then you consider that an outbreak until you can figure out what’s going on. At that point we’re closing down the school and sending everybody home, not just the kids who you know had contact.
“We don’t want to go back and forth [between virtual and in-person], and we don’t want to start having to quarantine people,” Dude said. “We want stability as much as possible.”
Tuesday’s board meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. and can be accessed by going to https://csdecatur.zoom.us/s/95614159391.
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